Jarc's Group Homes Offer More Than Shelter

April 29, 2009|DAVID SCHWARTZ dschwartz@tribune.com

They look like the patio homes in a new South Florida community.

But by May, the four 5,000-square-foot, eight-bedroom, four-bath houses on Yamato Road near U.S. Highway 441 will become home to the 32 adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities who will live at the Jewish Association for Residential Care's new Rales Campus Group Homes.

JARC employees and guests recently got together at one of the homes to put a mezuzah on the frame of the front door and bless the structure in a housewarming with four identical sets of household items - glasses, pots and pans, utensils, toasters, electric can openers - and gifts.

"What we're really doing today is turning a house into a home," said Rabbi Pam Mandel, of Temple Beth El of Boca Raton. "What makes a house a home is the people who live in it."

The four buildings at the JARC Rales Campus Group Homes were built with funds donated by Norman Rales, of Hillsboro Beach. Each home is named after one of Rales' and his late wife Ruth's four sons, Steven, Steward, Mitchell and Joshua.

The Rales name is a familiar one in West Boca Raton. The couple's contribution funded the construction of the Ruth Rales Jewish Family Service, which opened there in 1991.

Minto Communities built the homes, which cost about $500,000 each, at cost on land donated by developers Robert Levy and Harvey Geller. The 1.75-acre landscaped property is beside a small lake at the rear of a new shopping center and next to Temple Beth El's West Boca Raton synagogue, which is under construction.

JARC's "cluster" homes are licensed as adult congregate living facilities by Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration. JARC's six group homes and an apartment building, which together house 76 adults, are licensed by the state's Agency for Persons With Disabilities.

Putting the four homes together gives residents "more opportunities to do things together as a group," said Nancy Freiwald, JARC community outreach coordinator.

Each home has a leather sofa and soft stuffed chairs in the living room, identical beds and dressers in the eight bedrooms, a new washer and dryer, kosher kitchen and back-up generator.

Sitting around a huge rotating circular table in the dining area of the Steven Rales Residence, Joel Torner, 50, said the house is "absolutely fabulous."

Torner, who lives with his mother in Boca Raton, will soon move into the Joshua Rales Residence. "I'll have my own space. It's bigger than the group home I was living in, in West Palm Beach," he said.

Karl and Roz Groder's 58-year-old son, Eric, has lived in a JARC group home for 18 years.

"This is the ideal situation for everyone who requires residential care for a disabled person," Karl Groder said.

The Groders, who are in their 80s, pay a fee for their son's care.

"We are perfect examples of parents that benefit, and we can live our retirements in an independent way," Karl Groder said.

The couple said they know their son will have a home after they are gone.

"We won't have to worry about Eric," Roz Groder said. "He will be taken care of."